10 Weird, Wonderful Weather Phenomena

All the optical illusions and bizarre forms of lightning you require.

All the optical illusions and bizarre forms of lightning you require.

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Ball Lightning

Ball Lightning

They're unexplainable, unpredictable, and rare. Recorded sightings of these hovering, glowing spheres, which can range in size from a penny to several yards across, date back to ancient Greece, but scientists still don't know what causes them. Until recently many people didn't even think they were real.

The most plausible idea to explain ball lightning is vaporized silicon. In this hypothesis, a bolt of lightning strikes a spot of silica-rich soil, sending an orb of charged particles airborne. The inherent electricity causes the orb to glow.

In July 2012 researchers in China inadvertently captured video of this phenomenon, recording a 16-foot-wide ball of lightning on China's Qinghai Plateau. Their findings—released in January 2014—support the vaporized-silicon hypothesis, since there was silicon in the area's soil.

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Brocken Spectre

Brocken Spectre

Unless you're a mountain climber, chances are you've never experienced a Brocken spectre. A Brocken spectre is your own shadow magnified and topped with a rainbowlike halo, and it occurs when you're standing with the sun to your back. The sun casts a shadow on water droplets in the distant air before you, reflecting back off the water droplets. This light then diffracts, or spreads, creating the shadow's rainbowlike halo.

The name refers to the Brocken, the highest peak in Germany's Harz Mountains, where conditions for this eerie optical illusion are ideal. This misty mountain peak pokes above cloud level, which means the sun is relatively low.

Ball Lightning

They're unexplainable, unpredictable, and rare. Recorded sightings of these hovering, glowing spheres, which can range in size from a penny to several yards across, date back to ancient Greece, but scientists still don't know what causes them. Until recently many people didn't even think they were real.

The most plausible idea to explain ball lightning is vaporized silicon. In this hypothesis, a bolt of lightning strikes a spot of silica-rich soil, sending an orb of charged particles airborne. The inherent electricity causes the orb to glow.

In July 2012 researchers in China inadvertently captured video of this phenomenon, recording a 16-foot-wide ball of lightning on China's Qinghai Plateau. Their findings—released in January 2014—support the vaporized-silicon hypothesis, since there was silicon in the area's soil.

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Brocken Spectre

Unless you're a mountain climber, chances are you've never experienced a Brocken spectre. A Brocken spectre is your own shadow magnified and topped with a rainbowlike halo, and it occurs when you're standing with the sun to your back. The sun casts a shadow on water droplets in the distant air before you, reflecting back off the water droplets. This light then diffracts, or spreads, creating the shadow's rainbowlike halo.

The name refers to the Brocken, the highest peak in Germany's Harz Mountains, where conditions for this eerie optical illusion are ideal. This misty mountain peak pokes above cloud level, which means the sun is relatively low.

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Morning Glory Cloud

A Morning Glory cloud is a rare type of low-lying, massive roll cloud (a stand-alone, tube-shaped cloud) that measures up to 620 miles long and can be more than a mile high. These clouds sometimes appear consecutively and are accompanied by sudden winds. An updraft pushes through the front of the cloud, giving it a rolling appearance, while the moist, cooler air at the back of the cloud sinks downward.

While these spectacular formations have been seen over California, eastern Russia, and the English Channel, the best place to spot them is in the southern part of northern Australia's Gulf of Carpentaria from late September to early November. Scientists speculate that this is because of circular patterns associated with the area's strong sea breezes, as well as a high level of humidity that helps the clouds form.

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Derecho

A derecho is a severe wind storm that can reach speeds of 100 mph and often leaves a line of damage hundreds of miles long in its wake. Derechos are typically the result of a bow echo—one great thunderstorm formed from many smaller thunderstorms and shaped like an archer's bow. Picture it as the front line of an army of thunderstorms marching toward their enemy. Basically, you don't want to be in the way. Derechos typically occur in summer, and in the U.S. are most common in the Midwest.

H.L.I.T./Flickr

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Dust Devils

These vertical whirlwinds of debris and tiny particles are usually harmless, though their resemblance to small tornadoes is unnerving. You'll typically spot them in dry, desertlike places such as Nevada's Black Rock City or on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. Dust devils form when hot air near the earth's surface rises through a pocket of cooler air above, causing the overall air mass to rotate. As it spins, it sucks in more hot air. This causes the spinning to intensify, moving the whirlwind forward until no hot air remains and the mass dissolves.

Dust devils are usually short-lived and measure no more than about 3 feet in diameter and 12 feet tall, though some have measured hundreds of feet high. Debris inside a dust devil collides as it spins and can produce electricity, which is something researchers are only now beginning to study.

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Giant Hailstones

These massive ice balls can measure 6 inches or more in diameter, and you'd better not be beneath them as they fall. Giant hailstones have been known to cause severe damage to everything from airplanes to humans. Much larger than regular hailstones, giant hailstones are layers of ice that typically form during strong, moisture-heavy thunderstorms inland, where the air tends to be cooler. The storm's persistently rotating updraft helps keep hailstones afloat until they acquire more layers from the freezing rain, eventually becoming too heavy to sustain suspension and plummeting toward the ground.

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Snow Donuts

Also known as snow rollers or snow bales, these cylindrical formations are created in a similar way as snowmen. Basically, a force (in this case, the wind) rolls them across the ground, and wherever they stop, they stay. Snow donuts resemble their namesake because they have hollowed-out centers, the result of thin inner layers blowing away as they form.

But snow donuts are rare because they require perfect weather conditions: a buildup of icy snow already on the ground that prevents new snow from sticking, an easily movable top layer of accumulation, and a strong wind (but not too strong) to set the new accumulation in motion.

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Catatumbo Lightning

This phenomenon happens at the mouth of Venezuela's Catatumbo River and nowhere else. Catatumbo Lightning, or Relampago del Catatumbo, is a stream of lightning that occurs for 10 hours at a time and approximately 150 nights of the year. Sailors call it the Maracaibo Beacon and even use it to aid navigation.
What causes it? Catatumbo lightning originates from storm clouds that sit more than 16,000 feet above the earth. Winds whip across Lake Maracaibo—into which the Catatumbo River empties—and nearby plains, collecting heat and moisture, and possibly methane gas rising from the local bogs, as they go. Storm clouds from the surrounding mountains then meet with this mixture, resulting in a constant lightning show.

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Waterspouts

While no one is entirely sure why frogs, bats, and fish have been known to rain from the sky on occasion, one theory is waterspouts. These whirlwinds are basically tornadoes that form over oceans, rivers, and lakes, dipping down into the water below and sucking up whatever is in their wake. Waterspouts lose momentum and dissipate once they reach land, at which time whatever they're carrying—like salmon or trout—falls to the ground. Since objects of a similar weight fall together, it may seem like it's raining just one type of animal.

Golden Pheasant/Flickr

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Lenticular Clouds

Also called Altocumulus Standing Lenticularis clouds, Lenticular clouds form when moist air encounters a large, protruding landmass such as a hill or mountain and is forced upward with the help of strong winds. If there is already moisture above the landmass, the two will intersect and become a lenticular cloud, which resembles a flying saucer. They often form in waves, sort of like pancakes spread out across a plate, and appear stationary (though they're not) because moist air is constantly replenishing them. Look for them in winter and spring.